Was a pro-vaxxer left speechless by vaccine claims?

One tactic of the anti-vaccine activist is the Gish Gallop, which refers to a debate technique where someone overwhelms their opponent by presenting a large number of arguments in a short amount of time. (Learn more about social media “debate tactics” in our Toolkit on Social Media Advocacy.)

The idea is that it’s impossible for the opponent to respond to each point one by one due to the limited time, even if the points are weak or have inaccuracies. This tactic can make it look like the person using this technique has a stronger position because their opponent couldn’t address every single point they made. In fact, this video has been edited not to demonstrate any reply by the host, but the full video is available online.

Let’s start with the most incredible claim, that 550,000 Americans died after the vaccine. To believe that, we would need to believe that every death happening within days of the vaccine is caused by the vaccine. We would also need to believe that side effects are underreported by a factor of about 30 (a claim from this analysis).

But it’s wrong to conclude that every death is a vaccine death without any evidence that the vaccine caused these deaths.

Using VAERS to support this claim is unreliable. In fact, the government required any death after COVID vaccination to be reported as a function of the emergency use authorization, regardless of causation. Deaths clearly not caused by the vaccine are included in these reports.

Comparing the total number of deaths after vaccination, no matter the cause, with the number of deaths caused by the vaccine itself is misleading and incorrect. Moreover, assuming that the rate of reporting adverse events to VAERS after vaccination accurately reflects the true occurrence of adverse events is not accurate since these reports are unconfirmed.

Another claim is that “With every single injection, one is more and more likely to get COVID-19.” They are referencing this study, which looked at whether people who are up-to-date on their COVID vaccines (meaning they got at least one dose of the new COVID bivalent vaccine) are less likely to get COVID compared to those who are not up-to-date. They studied employees of the Cleveland Clinic during the time when a new version of the COVID virus (XBB lineages) was common.

Read the whole study, we have come to a different conclusion. What it really found was that the bivalent COVID-19 vaccine actually lowers the risk of infection.

The misunderstanding comes from misreading the figures contained in the study. This is called a Table 2 fallacy. Often, epidemiologists need to pool together data to come up with an estimate of risk, known as an adjusted effect estimate. A Table 2 fallacy results from multiple adjusted effect estimates from a single model presented in a single table. Problems arise when different types of estimates are presented on the same table. This fallacy is like saying that carrying a lighter makes you more likely to get lung cancer without considering whether the person smokes. In studies, it’s important to adjust for the right things.

This one tweet makes many more claims, as tends to be with a Gish Gallop. We always recommend stopping at fact-checking after a couple of points, but we will cover the others next week.